Where downtown Manhattan and north Brooklyn intersect.

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Sure, you could spend your New Year’s Eve in a confessional, but that would be a sin. Instead, why not head over to The Stone and kiss this miserable year goodbye with some real legends of downtown avant-garde.

It’s too late to save Rivington House, the former HIV treatment facility that a non-profit nursing home operator unexpectedly flipped to a luxury developer after the city quietly lifted a deed restriction. But a bill signed into law today should do something to prevent buildings designated for community use from becoming luxury condos.

The new law requires the city to maintain a searchable online database of properties with deed restrictions, and forces developers who want to have them lifted to inform their local City Council member, community board, and borough president. The law requires the mayor, a specially formed committee, and the Department of City Planning to review any such requests, and approve them with the mayor’s personal sign-off only if they’re deemed to be in the city’s best interest. While there had been talk of requiring the city’s stringent Uniform Land Use Review Procedure in such scenarios, the new law stops short of that.

If your idea of “discovering” new music is sitting back with a soy-milk Frappawhatever and browsing Pitchfork, then maybe you need 2 Bridges… but first you have to find it. Tucked away underneath the Manhattan Bridge in the New York Mart, the hidden gem sells independent, experimental, and international music as well as literature and art books.

Used to be, when a new Star Wars movie came out, the only decision you had to make was, well, whether to let George Lucas exploit your childhood nostalgia yet again– but also, whether to watch it in 2D or 3D. These days, however, you can dine, recline– everything short of watching the flick in hologram form. Here are the various ways you can see Rogue One around town, and how much it’ll cost ya.

Two long-standing annual fundraisers make for a constellation of downtown superstars; this year’s lineups are impressive as ever.

New Year’s Day Marathon at The Poetry ProjectJanuary 1, 3pm to January 2, 2am, at The Poetry Project, 131 E 10th St, tickets $20 in advance, $25 at the door.
The venerable Poetry Project is celebrating 50 years at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery. As recounted in a history of the intellectual incubator in this week’s Village Voice, the Project has hosted the likes of William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Spalding Gray, Jim Carroll, Robert Lowell, Patti Smith, and countless others. The 43rd installment of its annual marathon will feature living legends Penny Arcade, Justin Vivian Bond, Grace Dunham (yes, Lena’s sis), Jonas Mekas, Thurston Moore and his Sonic Youth bandmate Lee Ranaldo, Eileen Myles, Elliott Sharp, Lynne Tillman, Anne Waldman, and some 140 others. This is the only reason to work off that New Year’s hangover in a church.

While we count the days until WPIX airs its recently unearthed vintage yule log footage, the city’s new wifi kiosks are showing a virtual fireplace of their own. I can’t tell whether this is adorable or deplorable. After all, the lovely log is sandwiched in between ads for Abercrombie and H&M. Is it yet another instance of the once humble yule log being used as a marketing gimmick? If so, this is right up there with Donald Trump and Mike Pence invading my Facebook feed with ads for their abominable #MAGA Christmas-tree ornament. (By the way, the “Today only!” sale has been offered to me over the course of several days, which means you should never believe a word these guys say about THE HOLIDAY SEASON.) Anyway, this is definitely the least relaxing yule log ever. You can’t even hear the crackling of the flames over the cabbie who’s blasting his horn as a deliveryman yells, “Fuck you, you fuckin’ fuck.”

It was a March night in 1973. Sandra Levinson was working late when a bomb exploded in the inside hall of the Center for Cuban Studies, a leftist non-profit she had co-founded eight months earlier with documentary filmmaker Saul Landau and photojournalist Lee Lockwood. At the time of the blast, CCS was located in a Greenwich Village building on Barrow and West 4th Streets.

Shards of glass sprayed Levinson’s third-floor office. She told me her glasses were broken when a window fell on them. But Levinson, a former reporter for the now defunct Ramparts magazine and a one-time political science instructor at City College of New York, was wearing a heavy poncho and escaped what could have been fatal injuries. The Iowa native believes that the perp was a Cuban exile opposed to the late revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, possibly part of a group of violent extremists.

Punk’s not dead– it’s just super expensive. One of the very few CBGB awnings EVER made was sold at an auction this past weekend, and the prediction that it would cost a dumb amount of money was spot on. How much is a dumb amount of money, you ask? Approximately $30,000.

No offense, It’s a Wonderful Life, but Gremlins has to be the best holiday film of all-time. This guy knows it, and so does Alamo Drafthouse. When we heard Brooklyn’s new dine-in theater was screening the film and handing out limited-edition Gremlins tiki mugs, we just about gave ourselves a mohawk. Sadly, the tiki mugs weren’t ready to distribute last week, but we’re told they should be in by Friday. If you missed Tuesday’s screening, there’s another one tonight–but you’ll have to act fast, because just a couple of seats remained at the time of this posting.

If you miss out, don’t worry: Williamsburg bowling bar The Gutter is also screening Joe Dante’s 1984 classic tonight at 9pm, and it’s free. Granted, you won’t get a tiki mug, but you will get free homemade cookies and countless adorable shots of Gizmo ululating– which, by the way, one superfan was able to do at Alamo last week in order to win a Gremlins Christmas sweater. Impressive.

After nearly two years of renovations, the space formerly occupied by Yaffa Cafe has opened its doors as Taberna 97. The team behind the new restaurant, which serves Portuguese fare in a casual tavern setting, also owns St. Dymphna’s on the same block of St Marks Place.

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About B + B

Bedford + Bowery is where downtown Manhattan and north Brooklyn intersect. Produced by NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute in collaboration with New York magazine, B + B covers the East Village, Lower East Side, Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Bushwick, and beyond. Want to contribute? Send a tip? E-mail the editor.